International Women's Day #PressForProgress
This is a really important day for us at Studio 77, as a female led-company we feel it's important to celebrate and discuss International Women's Day.
Each year International Women's Day has a different theme, and this year its #PressforProgress - what does this mean I hear you say - well it's to "highlight women's struggles and inequality in the workplace following the World Economic Forum's 2017 Global Gender Gap Report that found gender parity is over 200 years away."*
The fact that we still even have to discuss this is pretty upsetting. In London, men earn on average 28% more than women for the same job. Just to put that into perspective, that means that on average men earn £13,882.98 more than women per year.**
But there is hope; with countries like Iceland leading the way by becoming the first country in the world to make it illegal to pay men more than women, we can only hope that this acts as an equality catalyst for the rest of the world.
However, pay is not the only issue with equality in the workplace, it's also the lack of women we've met in the design/development industry. With development and engineering deemed to be a ‘masculine job’ - whatever that means - offices we’ve worked in nearly always tend to be male dominated environments. Perhaps we're working in the wrong places, but they seem to be heavily dominated by male egos and toxic masculinity.
"They would point to the guys in the room, and say "these guys do all the clever stuff with the coding" and then point to us and say "these girls make it look pretty" and it left me feeling belittled.”
Ruby Lee, Founder of Studio 77
“Recently I was working with a client where the whole office were female, it was just lovely to see everyone supporting each other not trying to get one over on each other.”
Lilly Yau, Senior Digital Designer Studio 77
“It is tough out there as a female designer - I always feel like I have to prove myself and work twice as hard as our male counterparts. I feel females are underrepresented in the design industry especially in the world of development. At Studio 77, we are in charge of our own destiny’s and it’s up to us to make it a success.”
It is refreshing when we do get to work with other females, there’s this unspoken supportiveness and connection between us all. We’ve nearly all experienced some kind of inequality at some point, and in some weird, backwards way, it just brings us closer together and reminds us what we’re fighting for.
At Studio 77 we actively try to submerge ourselves in these balanced, collaborative environments. We are seeing a change, and although it seems slow, we’re hopeful that one day soon we will gain complete equality. Until then we will never give up our fight and we know that our sisters out there agree.
We're not just pressing for progress, we're pressing for complete equality.
Sources
Quote in beginning: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/what-international-womens-day-2018-14368810
** Time Out London City Life Index
